


the Gate

by Ha_Her



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Family Bonding, Gen, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 08:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20793659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ha_Her/pseuds/Ha_Her
Summary: This one-shot story is about what Will Byers had experienced before the moment he left the words "close gate" for Eleven.





	the Gate

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [关门 the Gate](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20793260) by [Ha_Her](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ha_Her/pseuds/Ha_Her). 

**the Gate**

Slowly, his vines scrambled up and twisted a lock of tentacle around my neck one more time, afraid that I could still breathe. 

I couldn’t feel the cold there anymore. Instead, my hands and feet felt warm again.

_Might he want me to feel a bit easier to death?_ He didn’t speak a word about that, but I understood clearly - being the dead, I would comply better with him, with his massacre. I am _the trigger_ for it, for releasing his fury upon the mass in the town, and I would be his one _tentacle_ to kill more.

Were I a tentacle for him, the compliant one I would be, compliant enough like his _fingers_, and he didn’t want his _fingers_ to choke himself to death. So, he would rather force me from this body beforehand. 

It’s good because I would die as soon as not. I had already killed many people - strangers, or acquaintances, whomever I brought to death in collusion with him… yet I would never bear one more time to see myself killing more. Now that any resistance was useless, I had rather leave the world without senses.

Also, without any visions or voices more.

While all consciousness was gradually being split out of my skull, mom’s voice echoed around my ears like a whisper, breaking into tears, sounded like she had sounded when I ran a heavy fever once before, “_Will...Will…_”

I’m sorry, mom. I’ve _tried_.

——————————————————————————

Opened my eyes, I found myself basking from head to feet in the warmth of sunlight, sniffing at the fragrance of wildflowers, and I saw the forest, the lawn, the children playing around frolicly, and faces familiar yet strange in some way. 

It’s _strange_, indeed. All of these felt like from another world but also seemed to appear again from yesterday.

For a dizzying moment, I reached down to the ground and nearly fell to my knees, but from somewhere in the distance, a voice called and stopped me. It was a boy, and he has a weak but beautiful timbre. “Hi, are you willing to play with me?”

I turned to him and saw the boy steps away from me. Clasped his hands in front of him, he stood there with a pair of wide and pretty eyes dodging about as if he had no idea what he should do the next steps.

He wanted me to buddy up to him? I had been never talking or playing well with others, only immersed in staring up a scene alone for a long moment to imagine how I drew its details on my drawing board, so no one had ever understood me or even paled up with me except my mom and my old brother Jonathan. Thus, I had no friends.

I stared at him, the boy tilting his head yet casting a careful look upward, imagining which color of crayons I should use to draw the lines of his pupil for a moment. 

“Yes. I am.” Since afraid that he couldn’t hear me well, I nodded once, and twice.

He smiled, and I found his colorful smile owned the warmest light which seemed like the sunshine. He reached out with his left hand gawkily and said, “My name is Michael. You can call me Mike.”

At that moment it hit me to draw his eyes in cinnamon, which was warm and gentle.

“_Will, please…_”

Mike _vanished_, so did the playing children, the forest, and the lawn. I returned to the darkness, hearing someone’s sobbing. 

It was my mom.

Was she still waiting for me home? Once before there had been dark and cold and all I could rely on to hide and strive for surviving was her voice… I had been still trying to survive, always trying, until that moment.

“For me, please, my dear, come back. I love you.”

“I love you too, mom. I love you all.”

How I wished to return under the sunshine, to breathe the fresh air, to draw the scene I catch at the moment, and to listen to what the most rebellious with Jonathan, and also missed the craziest ideas we friends came up with for a science competition in one afternoon… How I wished to come back home. 

While I couldn’t come back already.

I couldn’t back, sorry.

——————————————————————————

What I was only able to do, for you, whom I loved so deeply, was to prevent my leave from assisting him to open the gate of this place I stayed now, towards all of you.

I felt a shadow near me before I lost all of my consciousness. 

Then, I did what I only could do.

And then, mom’s sobbing disappeared, so did the sounds from any other things.

I was too unconscious to recall the fact my life was suspended just for a season, a moment before my being faded away.

Afterward, he got angry because of my treacherous minds and defiant choice. I could feel his fury, too intensive to let him lose the interest in the massacre itself. 

Both _cold and warm_ rushed up and then faded away together.

My all senses towards the environment began to be split away and the gate was closing, which once led to home, but then I didn’t care anymore.

He was so furious but also curious about my choice, so he was releasing a bit the control of my mind and letting me gasp, seemed to wonder what else I could say at the final second.

I gasped and I closed my eyes and I whispered to her,

“_Let me go._“

Please let me go and do what you must do. For me.


End file.
